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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627134">Lungs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/owncode/pseuds/owncode'>owncode</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dungeons &amp; Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Original Player Characters, far too flowery of language, just a weird little vignette i wrote for one of my d&amp;d campaigns, poetic depictions of violence and abuse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:08:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,673</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627134</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/owncode/pseuds/owncode</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She lets her lips quirk into the uneasy recreation of a tentative smile as she tells him she’s from nowhere. Maybe someday he’ll believe it. Maybe it’ll be an inside joke after years of asking. </p><p>Lies are always the loveliest when the liar wants to believe them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Lungs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my first published work, so thank you so much for your interest! If you take a look at the end notes, it might help with any confusion as this is very poetic and purposefully vague, but it might also spoil some of the mystery.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Inhale.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Enough to fill your lungs. Not too much. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Hold it.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Feel the expansion of your chest, the ground beneath you, the soft noises of living things around you. Feel the beat of your too-quick heart, little rabbit. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Exhale.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Collapse in on yourself. Better to cower in fear than to feel the empty vacuum of you.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Hold it.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> It burns, doesn't it, when you breathe out all your air. It burns like the penitent at the altar to the lies he tells himself. That's your will to survive. It makes you ruthless, but so too does it make your quarry thus.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Inhale again.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> So sharpen yourself to a sanguine edge.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Then, when you see the gnawing hope of the desperate… </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Strike. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>She sits and waits, watching for the moment to slip in and make herself someone. There are others, not with her, but near enough that she knows that they want in just the same as she does. It isn’t a killing blow she’ll mete out tonight, so she lets them slide to the wayside of her mind. She doesn’t forget them: that’s a mistake liable to leave her precious side open for a dagger. Instead, she twirls herself into the snowstorm of white and black uniforms and - sees him.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Once again, little rabbit. Softly now, I shouldn’t be hearing you breathe.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Everyone wants something, she knows, and that something is power over them. She wants and craves, had never been able to carve that part out of herself. She wonders if she had ever been a particularly easy tool to wield. The results must have been worth it, though. He knows the name of her new face, but not her name, not the name of the dagger <em> he </em>wielded as an extension of himself. She spent far too much energy to let this scarred, old man drag her out of her comforting obscurity. This lapdog wants something from her, though. Or his owner does. She wants to know how. She’ll give, let them move her like their pawn. Right now, she must.</p><p>So she goes with the siblings and the tiefling as instructed. The tiefling is stoic, quiet. She can respect suffering in silence, but she must still keep careful watch. He may see more than he understands, but experience begets understanding. If he doesn’t now, he will. It’s inevitable. For now, though, she admires his skin like winter dawn, freckles like disappearing stars, and his moonspun hair from afar. She wonders what it must be like to always be noticed without saying a word. The siblings share an uncanny familiarity. It makes her chest ache. She swallows it down and exchanges her mask for one of contemplative silence. She had always thought of luck and misery as the sides of one coin. She hasn’t had faith in the benevolence of the gods for years, so she isn’t foolish enough to think that coin might be tossed by an unseen hand. She doesn’t concern herself with the machinations of uncaring megalomaniacs. She just wonders which side of the coin it will land on in the end. Would luck or misery be fated to outlive the other half of their coin? </p><p>She knows, faintly, that others might feel a kinship for those with whom they share a common ancestor. Her nerves are quickly grated to dust by the only other half-elf of their little band of merry misfits. The unfortunate lot of the tiefling to be noticed without wanting to be is something she can understand. The ceaseless desire to never be unheard, unseen, unknown is an unspeakable horror to her. She can’t look away from her morbid fascination. She thinks herself a child, fingers dipping into warm, sticky-sweet blood for the first time, nauseous and elated all shaking in the same breath. And worse, he seems as fixated on her. She breathes the easiest around his brother. The large half-orc makes himself inconspicuous in a way that the tiefling can’t quite manage. He doesn’t see what she doesn’t want him to, but he isn’t bound and determined to press her into conversation. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Are there tears in your eyes? </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Somewhere, in the soft lull of dusk, she settles in and lets the stitched edging of her mask tighten to a tailored fit. Galianna Softflare of no one, from nowhere, and sewn together with nothings. Made of, if not love, affection for their little group. She lets the half-elf lean against her shoulder as she and the half-orc sing a soft duet, pastel and gentle. She lets her lips quirk into the uneasy recreation of a tentative smile as she tells him she’s from nowhere. Maybe someday he’ll believe it. Maybe it’ll be an inside joke after years of asking. </p><p>Lies are always the loveliest when the liar wants to believe them.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Do you feel love? </em>
</p><p> </p><p>In that same soft lull, Galianna Softflare lets them become more. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Cut them out, little rabbit. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Salvation.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Sentiment will only hurt you at the end of it all. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Oszaren Valthana-Skullcrusher.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Besides…they’ll hate you by then. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Juno Valthana-Skullcrusher.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Didn’t she? By the end. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Linnarel Ghilain.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Oh, my darling little rabbit. I only want what’s best. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>She rips apart a stitch when they chastise her for doing what was <em> needed of her </em>, for doing what kept them safe. The mask chafed, their morality pulling far too tight on the silk stitching. She barely recognized what was happening when it did. She just simply took a breath and let the ocean wash over her, pull her under and cocoon her in suffocatingly cold warmth.</p><p> </p><p>In. </p><p> </p><p>Hold.</p><p> </p><p>Out.</p><p> </p><p>Hold.</p><p> </p><p>She strikes between breaths, in the stillness of their hidden little enclave. Under the silent eye of the desert sun, she breathes dust and blood and, lungs burning a silent scream, watches the skin on his neck slide apart. </p><p> </p><p>In.  </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Let me take care of your silly sentiments, little rabbit. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Out.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Or have you taken care of them yourself? You’ve always frightened the beautiful children.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>She wonders if tearing the mask away hurts because they’ve dug themselves into the heart of her, because she’s let this farce grow into her skin, because she’s believed a lie. Better the pain now, she supposes, slipping away to exist between the beats of her weak, wanting, half-human heart.</p><p>Galianna Softflare falls away, discarded. Galianna’s purpose is unfulfilled, her dreams and ambitions, her wants and her desires, her hates and her annoyances mere ashes thrown to the wind. Weak and bleeding. <em> Soft. </em>Friends are Galianna’s luxury, her vice, her downfall, her pain, her love. Friends are what enable her to be struck down at the knee, immobilised and doomed from the first blow. Galianna dies, mouth gaping for a breath of air that will never come.</p><p>The hand on her shoulder tightens to the point of bruising. Slowly, the pointer finger uncurls and taps twice. He doesn’t stop in his sneering at them, but she can barely hear his words over the roaring in her ears and she silently, invisibly slips her dagger out of its sheath, raising her eyes to the tiefling. Take out the healer first. Her gaze drifts to the half-orc and the half-elf. Kill one and you’ve already taken the fight out of the other. She debates whether he wants a show of pain and agony or if he wants the evidence of her mistakes discarded quickly.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Little rabbit, I know you won’t disappoint me.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> But maybe some assistance is in order…  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> I suppose we’ll have to cut the human out of you, Ilethanna Ghilain, last of my name. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“This second lapse into folly simply won’t do.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Now - </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Strike true, little rabbit.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Make-believe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The ringing in her ears is a concussive blast of thunder, muffling everything with its hurtful screech. She knows she’s back to a blank slate, but this time, her instincts school her into unresponsiveness, barely reacting outwardly as the floor drops out from under her and she swallows down acid. The room tilts on an axis, worse than any liquor she’s ever drank, more awful than any treacherous fall from far, far too high. The cotton around her now isn’t inebriation: it’s sheer, animal terror. It’s panic, panic that gets her killed, panic that blinds her, muffles her hearing, dulls her senses, she isn’t thinking correctly, she needs to be smarter than this because she’s better than this. Her fears have been actualized, realised, made tangible, even for all she can’t reach out and touch them. Suddenly the looming specter of her past, of Ilethana Ghilain, of her, of Linnarel Ghilain, of him, of Maha’rel Ghilain are in front of her, ghosts clinging to her clothes and pulling her down, down, down into the abyss of hell and suffering that waits for her so that she might pay penance for her sins. The staccato in her chest feels like a vice, twisting tighter and tighter until she’s sure that she can’t, isn’t —</p><p>breathing —</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>We decided to play (Zone of) truth or dare for a session and force backstory lore drops out of each other, so here's my character's big drop (though it doesn't really explain much in game).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Games have been familiar to her since she was a child. They’re a crystalline version of the power struggles people play out in their social dramas. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He </span>
  </em>
  <span>loved them, taught her to play with ruthless accuracy and efficiency so she might disarm and declaw her opponents without a single blade unsheathed. Yet, paradoxically, it had all started with a dagger, wicked and gleaming as she learned how to swipe at him, how to dodge, and how to take a blow to her child-fat knuckles without letting go. They added verbal sparring once she learned the vulnerabilities to aim for, but he never minced his words in the same way he pulled his blows. Linna loved games in a different way, having never gotten the hang of the not-play-fighting. Her summertime nature lent itself to bright peals of laughter, filled to the brim with joy until the very last game. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hide, Linna, </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>now</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span>!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“But I don’t —”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She lets herself slip-slide into the mask of Galianna Softflare, the identity starting lay roots into her skin, deeper and deeper every time she pulled it back on. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He</span>
  </em>
  <span> had warned her often of being someone for too long and she feels that warning in the tightness of her chest when she lets her viper-strike question raze into Salvation. She asks after his shame, this silent stalwart defender with too little regard for steeling his heart. She wonders if this is what shame feels like, and, while she recognizes his pain, she isn’t capable yet of regret. She barely knows how to emulate it and she can’t bring herself to the customary apologies, polite though they may be. Galianna Softflare has become too close to reality, too close to a sense of self for her to clearly distinguish and act out the social niceties she might otherwise when making herself someone. Still, she feels for him, knows she has cut him to the quick, as he wears his melancholy like a perfume, heavy and thick in the air around him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They had started this game lightly, with little to no intention of harm or manipulation, so she settles herself, smothers the regret as she inhales, holds it, —</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If you’re not playing to win, you’re losing, little rabbit.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>— exhales, holds it, and resumes breathing. She’s shied away from the half-elf’s affections, too unwilling to be out of control of the situation for something as intimate as a full kiss. She instead gives just enough for him to let it go and lets him kiss her forehead. She’ll get him back for that later, she promises herself, dismissing the wounded-puppy look on his face. She needs to keep him on her side, even if he’s as overbearing as he could possibly make himself at times. He likes a show and he likes to be kept on his toes, so she thinks she’s got the perfect trick up her sleeve, she just needs to save it. It’s an impulsive idea, stupid and reckless, and she blames the alcohol that wraps her razor edges in soft wool and makes her fuzzy and rounded. She’ll rethink it and reassess in just a moment when she can clear the fog in her mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Truth,” she decides.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about those scars, Galianna? Care to tell us?” the Baron’s voice lilts, the words a caress and as carefully melodic as a song. The meaning of them cuts through the pleasant haze of wine like they were woven with magic. She wouldn’t be surprised to know he was a bard at some point. Courtiers usually were. But she feels no compulsion to answer, no desire to please, just simply the weight of the truth spell the tiefling had cast on her tongue. The truth is uncanny and strange to her, words too large and too many until they’re fit to burst from her quicksilver lips without a care for her secrets. She breathes. In, hold, out, hold. In. Out. This dance between them is one they’ve been twirling through since they met. He leads for the most part, for she places just enough trust in this unfamiliar partner to believe that he will, instead of telling her what she wants, simply show her the path there like a pawn in this game of chess he thinks she isn’t aware he’s playing. He’ll take a forward step, hoping to catch her wrong-footed. She’ll take a step to the side of her partner, twisting not to avoid the blow, but to control where and how it lands — </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fairly simple,” she informs him, “I learned to wield a dagger at five years old.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She minds the question about her patchwork hands less than asking after her uncanny yellow eyes or the dark, deep-ocean colored tattoos on her forehead and chin, but she’s never more grateful for the woven top that reaches to the bottom of her jaw than when asked about her scars, lest she has to explain the roping, jagged silver-shine line that stretches from her left hip to just under her right ear. It’s a callous reminder of being split open, of uncaring hands ripping out her child’s-toy stuffing, and of him slowly, cruelly stitching the seam together into something worse, something hollow. Someday soon, she knows they’re bound to see it and she ought to think of a lie soon. Luckily, a ‘fight gone wrong’ fits neatly into her ill-defined past and barely manages to be a lie. She simply ignores the shocked murmurings, instead steering their attention forward to the next turn. It’s hardly a surprise that the half-elf, ever determined to serve his brother by bringing him as many stories as he can gather, picks her, ready to press for information. She can’t miss his obvious desire for information as he expresses it even without speaking a word, wearing it as involuntarily as he breathes, a wry smile stretching over her lips as enjoyment sparks briefly in the hollow of her ribs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>You’re no fun! Play the game right!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I am! I get to choose truth or dare and I pick — </span>
  </em>
  <span>“</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Dare, if you please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re good at impressions, right? Do one!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Inhale.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The first step to creating a new self is understanding those around you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hold it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I taught you how to study those around you so that you might know them as intimately as if they were yourself.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Exhale.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pick your target carefully for this, little rabbit, lest you fold your hand before you can play it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Galianna Softflare is tucked away as she lets her mental fingers flick through all the masks she’s made like pages in a book. She won’t give the half-elf the power to choose who she’ll impersonate, but it’ll have to be someone he knows, otherwise it won’t be the show he so craves. Her gossamer fingers pause and she pulls the mask out from its page. She lets the feel of the gilded edge of the golden stitching she’s used to tie it together rub against her fingertips, feels the cool, flowing silk of wealth and the power that comes from that wealth, lets the royal purples and shimmering red of the fabric color her vision briefly in hidden powers and the guileless charm of half-truths. She rises smoothly, grabbing the wine bottle and a new glass. As she pours just a touch more wine than is polite, she strings guileless grace and easy charm around her limbs until it melts into the movements. She drapes herself artfully in an ostentatiously adorned chair, the most extravagant in the room, never spilling a single drop. Her left leg kicks up and over the arm of the chair and the right spreads out in front of the chair, while her back rests against the opposite chair arm. She lets sensuality ooze from the movement which, despite encapsulating all of a few seconds, is a carefully choreographed ballet, drawing the eye where she wants it as effortlessly as rolling water. She wants them to see lean lines hinting of muscle hidden under fabric, the rippling dark colors inviting the eye to strain to see more details of her physique. As her lips curl into a delighted, open smile, she pulls to the forefront of her mind the first time she heard the Baron speak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Honored guests, compatriots, </span>
  <em>
    <span>friends</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I can’t thank you enough for coming tonight,” she says, making sure to let intimacy and warmth infuse the melody of her voice as she finishes reciting the few sentences Baron De Lot gave at his welcoming party.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she stands, she plucks off the glimmering silk mask, slipping it off as easily as it had glided on. The blank slate that replaces it briefly in between her breaths scares most people, she knows, so as quickly as she can, she plucks Galianna’s familiar, fitted mask out from the hundreds of pages of hundreds of identities. It’s tailored for formlessness of her, just like any other she might make when she must stay a while as someone else. Though her posture never changes, the warmth drains from it, as well as the loose-limbed facsimile of intoxication. As the emotion slinks off of her like rain off a leaf, she knows most find its absolute lack unnerving and the quick slide into such a state upsetting. She’s careful to watch Tacet Umbra out of the corner of her eye, still stalking her game as she awaits his headlong stumble into relaxation, journey eased by the expensive drink. He doesn’t react to her sudden change, but he isn’t looking as closely as he would normally. She knows her eyes are shuttered and flat as she assesses her quarry for just a moment, the look made all the more horrifyingly devoid of feeling by her two-toned gold and yellow eyes with their lack of distinct pupils.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tacet’s got a drink in hand and has finished a few by now. Nothing indicates it, but everything about him has changed. She sees herself reflected in him, knows that they are both existing in the moment where one might gain the ability to maim if they’re watching closely enough, if they’re motivated enough, but she’s not sure that he’s matched her dogged ambition. He’s not always prepared because there’s nothing he wants from them. He’s defensive, yet if she lets him think that she’s forgotten her desires to have a night of relaxation, her moment will come. The older man hasn’t quite lowered his guard enough, but from the set of his shoulders and the way his gaze slides away easily, no longer stuck to her as the Baron conjures a few illusions to cheer the dour tiefling, she can feel opportunity leaning into her like an old friend. She lets her eyes follow his to the man moping at the table. The tightness resumes and, with it, Galianna Softflare slides into place, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>she </span>
  </em>
  <span>remains in the emotionless void of yellow in her eyes and the perfunctory nature of the small smile on her lips. She sips her drink as she crosses to the bar. As just the barest amount passes her lips, it tastes like victory and bitter ashes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I hate it when you do that!</span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em> Stop!</em>
  </b>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m sorry, I’m sorry, look, I’m me, okay?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She can’t quite manage to fit her mask of morality and decency on any further, suddenly stretched tight as the memories wreak havoc. The glass remains stationary on the counter, despite its siren song of recklessness and being rid of the guilt because she </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn’t playing right, it isn’t fair — </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Somewhere in the background, she hears the tiefling take a drink of… something. Hears the panic of others as it instantly affects him. They must not have specified what it was, but as she’s at the bar, working to smother the sudden burn in her chest of pain, shame, anger, sin, </span>
  <em>
    <span>guilt — </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Inhale.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What does guilt serve, except to make you weak?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hold it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Would you stay your hand, seeing your quarry in front of you?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Exhale.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Would you show mercy? Would you make yourself the weakling you were born as, disregard the strength and power I’ve given you?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hold it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Of course not. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Inhale.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Galianna, your turn!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So smother it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Smother it until your guilt is the embers of your funeral pyre and then pour water over it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>— opportunity takes her hand like a lover might, gentle and cloying. They announce her turn.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Galianna turns, her same dry smile tucked up into the corners of her lips. There’s no strain in her eyes. Guilt isn’t useful right now while she hunts for what she wants so that she might </span>
  <em>
    <span>be </span>
  </em>
  <span>Galianna Softflare in her entirety, grown into this mask until it’s her own skin, her own self. She doesn’t leave the bar just yet, content to observe from afar, out of striking range even as she readies her swing of the executioner’s axe. Intimacy is uncomfortable in the basest of ways, even the easy camaraderie of the others in the room is too much. She drowns more and more the longer she stays close and pretends, eardrums agonized from the pressure and ribs slowly cracking inwards under the weight of </span>
  <em>
    <span>so much</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The further away, the closer to the surface, the easier she breathes. No one fusses at her absence, still too caught up in the mystery drink Tacet gave the tiefling. She sees dappled sunlight through the leaves, the shine of  plates of armor sliding apart, a crack in the door. There’s no hesitation as she seizes the opportunity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tacet. Truth or dare?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The question is painfully simple, asked casually and slurred slightly to mimic her supposed altered mental state.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Truth.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Now strike true, little rabbit.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Who did you get my name from?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She can see the realisation in the infinitesimal widening of his eyes, the tightening of his fingers around the bottle of not-alcohol. She is playing to win and he knows it now, the question wiping the fog of liquor from his mannerisms abruptly. He truly sees her as she wins this battle in their little war over secrets and shades, a battle he thought not to lose so soon or to be defeated so simply. The next battle will be harder; she won’t be underestimated again. The words work in his mouth as he fumbles for a lie. The lie he would otherwise give, nocked and ready to fly, is unable to let loose, thanks to the truth spell, the deception caught in his throat like a fly in honey. Half-truths bunch at the back of his tongue, but none of them manage to manufacture enough of the sincere answer to escape from between his teeth. She watches the truth rise like bile in his stomach, worming its way through his chest to his throat to his jaw, which clenches and unclenches once, twice, before he finally spits out her real, honest, </span>
  <em>
    <span>awful </span>
  </em>
  <span>answer out like it pains him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maha’rel Ghilain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ringing in her ears is a concussive blast of thunder, muffling everything with its hurtful screech. She knows she’s back to a blank slate, but this time, her instincts school her into unresponsiveness, barely reacting outwardly as the floor drops out from under her and she swallows down acid. The room tilts on an axis, worse than any liquor she’s ever drank, more awful than any treacherous fall from far, far too high. The cotton around her now isn’t inebriation: it’s sheer, animal terror. It’s panic, panic that gets her killed, panic that blinds her, muffles her hearing, dulls her senses, she isn’t thinking correctly, she needs to be smarter than this because she’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>better than this</span>
  </em>
  <span>. She knows how to lie and cheat and win, even if </span>
  <em>
    <span>it isn’t fair!</span>
  </em>
  <span> Her fears have been actualized, realised, made tangible, even for all she can’t reach out and touch them. Suddenly the looming specter of her past, of Ilethana Ghilain, of her, of Linnarel Ghilain, of him, of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Maha’rel Ghilain</span>
  </em>
  <span> are in front of her, ghosts clinging to her clothes and pulling her down, down, down into the abyss of hell and suffering that waits for her so that she might pay penance for her sins. The staccato in her chest feels like a vice, twisting tighter and tighter until she’s sure that she can’t, </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> —</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>breathing — </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Hold it.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I always told you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Inhale.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I always said it, every time you even so much as thought of leaving.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Hold it.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I told you again when you left that last time, but you didn’t believe me, did you? Thought you had made yourself unknowable, surpassed </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>my</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> teachings.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Exhale.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You remember what I told you, my darling little rabbit. I know you do.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Hold it.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll find you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Inhale.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And I’ve done it, haven’t I?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Hold it.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Does the mystery of how sting? Are you yet wounded? I so dearly hope so.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she exhales, her shudder leaks into the air silently and invisibly. She loosens her cramping fingers from around the delicate glass stem of her wine, tension refusing to leave the muscles. She leaves the wine untouched, rippling like blood with the laughter and delight reverberating in the air as the game continues. Automatically, she lets herself be smothered by Galianna Softflare, in this empty person, this identity she’s forged from no one that she might become someone to call herself. Galianna has ripped out the worst of Ilethana and left scraps to cobble together into a new collage, but neither of them have a goodness, a kindness to take from or room to grow it, but she’s been learning, working, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn’t that </span>
  </em>
  <span>enough</span>
  <em>
    <span> for fate?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She lets the half-elf catch her in this chase of his, allowing herself to make a promise that she’ll regret later. When he (</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ozzy,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she recalls briefly) tells her what his friendship entails, what his expectations are, she’ll answer him. She lets herself be kind enough to not immediately, brutally, deny his offer of friendship, lets the broken, mewling thing in her chest yearn for affection even as she silences it. When Ozzy answers her on what he thinks a friendship ought to be, he will have his answer and he’ll have it when it isn’t forced out of the same broken, </span>
  <em>
    <span>cruel </span>
  </em>
  <span>thing inside of her that controls her tongue under the compulsion of honesty. She lets the half-elf (</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ozzy</span>
  </em>
  <span>, reminds the whimper of a feeling in her chest) think his following sentence lands a blow, wounds her in some small way. She’s known enough friends to know that it will be as it always has been for her: transactional, cold, unyielding. It matters not in the end who used who, simply that it ended with hurts aplenty. If Ozzy chooses to ask again, he can have his answers that day, because she certainly won’t remind him of this promise if he’s fool enough not to see the mercy of forgetting her for what it is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She watches the half-orc (</span>
  <em>
    <span>Juno</span>
  </em>
  <span>, sentiment murmurs, softer and softer), drunk and flailing, staring so deeply into Tacet Umbra’s eyes that she thinks that they might be having what she would crudely deem ‘a moment.’ Then she sees the drunken shine of competition in the large half-orc’s eyes and the uncomfortable blinking of the older man. She would have laughed earlier, as much as she could in this strange learning of who she is and how she does things, even if it was the soft exhale with barely a noise to it. She hadn’t figured out how Galianna, how </span>
  <em>
    <span>she </span>
  </em>
  <span>laughed yet, but envies the half-orc for how he laughs brashly and smiles and positions himself to protect his brother without ever losing his good humor. He still has a sibling to protect, afterall. He must be doing a far better job than she did. They haven’t known each other for long, she knows now, and maybe that was the secret to their continued survival. If so, then they must not be fated to spend much time together. This may be the sweet bit of familial love and companionship that they will share for a time before they lose each other. And yet, tragedy follows her like her grandfather follows her, determined and insistent, so it might just be her allowing her misfortune to be wrought on others rather than any luck or fate shared between the half-siblings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tacet holds out a dagger in obvious challenge as she shields herself from his probing by choosing dare, unwilling to have a conversation of who, exactly, Maha’rel Ghilain is to her. The fact that he knows that name is already too much information and the way he hands her the weapon too eerily reminiscent of her childhood to feel like coincidence. Instead of the challenge of a fight she is expecting, he wishes to test her mettle in a different way. It’s a threat as he asks for a show of her skills and then a promise when he hands her the dagger finally. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Pick it up, child. You know what needs to happen next.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t miss; she rarely does, these days. Ilethana knows how to handle weapons, has known for fourteen, soon to be fifteen, long, long years. The motion is as habitual and practiced and as natural as lying. There’s no artful flair, no dramatic twist of her fingers, no pride, no confidence. Her elbow bends and straightens the slightest amount, the gesture building into the flick of her wrist as the dagger flies through the air to find its home in a pillow that the older man had declared her target. Her quips are barbs and his words sharpen to match. He makes sure to make himself known as her equal, to match her skills so that, not just she, but everyone in the room may see that she has not bested him in this. The gesture lacks the naked cruelty of her grandfather, even still, so she remains uncowed, statuesque as he throws the blade again to make a second hole in the same pillow. She doesn’t so much as twitch when he takes his seat again, easy conversation flowing with their benefactor, despite feeling the shadow of a hand on her shoulder, tight grip warning her of any action.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tiefling is finally coherent again, but now intoxicated enough that he can’t stifle his thoughts or staunch the crimson hurt leaking out of the verbal wound she made at the start of this night. He asks something of Baron de Lot that should rip heartstrings for all the pain in his voice and the shimmer of tears in his eyes. She can’t muster pity or even quite sympathy, but knows that she was once him, crying at the feet of her immovable, heartless grandfather, the only father and mother she has ever known. In his mental anguish, she sees her lifeblood, unforgettably vivid as it leaked out from the new seam across her back in rivers, freckling the floor and pooling and mixing with blood not her own in the hollow of the throat of her permanently silenced sister as she screams her torment to her uncaring guardian. The tiefling doesn’t scream like she had, but he projects misery like a torrential storm. He’s lost someone, hurt someone close to him, just as she has. Perhaps even, just as badly as she did. Galianna wonders if he is what she could have been, had she been raised with praise and love and kisses her goodnight instead of putting weapons in her hands and forcing her to fight for her right to continue on in this life. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders how he would have fared in her home, ponders if his delicate dawn-sky skin would have toughened and tanned to a starless midnight the same color of her now-hardened heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s sure that this man, so sure of his moral compass and his caring nature, would have been himself throughout.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He probably would have been better at the end of it all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He would have been… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He would have been Linnarel.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Linna, </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>please,</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> hide</span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em> now</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> —”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her quick, rabbit-terror heart has calmed to a flutter under her breastbone and she lets herself be Galianna fully, pulling the mask on to quickly staunch the bleeding in the wound Tacet Umbra has, knowingly or not, reopened. She pours water from a pitcher into a fresh cup, no delicate glass stem or garishly decorated chalice this time. Nothing for drunk fingers to fumble with and break with accidental strength or to drop and shatter. She makes her way back to the group seated around the low table with her freshly raw wounds bound with the paper bandages of pretending to be someone who didn’t experience any of it. Galianna doesn’t pause for this man, made of her what-ifs and Linnarel’s what-could-have-been’s, to notice her as she slides the cup into his fingers. Like any babe, he automatically grasps it without thinking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(</span>
  <em>
    <span>Salvation</span>
  </em>
  <span>.) The word is the death knell of her fledgling emotions, barely a breath as it gives her the name of this last member of her silly little group</span>
  <em>
    <span>.</span>
  </em>
  <span> She lets herself have her weakness, her wants, her cravings for one bitter moment before she crushes them and she squeezes his shoulder in the heartbeat between giving him the cup and moving. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her fingers don’t dig her nails into his skin, not like the phantom of Maha’rel’s hand on her own shoulder. They remain flat, unthreatening, and give no command, yet her grip is firm and solid for the brief milliseconds she allows herself this weakness. She intends it to be a grave gesture of censure, a reminder not to let himself slip into drunken melancholy and say more than he intends to, to not reveal more of his shame than he already has given away, but she thinks the gesture might have been verging on feeling like a kindness all the same. When she sits, Galianna feels the weight of his stare, heavy and expectant. Salvation won’t look away until she acknowledges him, so she meets his gaze and, holding it, thinks that they understand each other a bit better.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It isn’t quite forgiveness. She doesn’t need it from him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It isn’t quite affection. He doesn’t want it from her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Galianna waits for him to look away first, which he does after a slight nod. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t return the movement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is only a start, in the end.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks so much for reading if you made it this far! Hope you enjoyed this second little love letter to possibly my favorite D&amp;D character I've made.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading my first published work, if you've made it all the way to the end! I thought it might provide some clarity into my thought process while writing, if anyone was curious. </p><p>I'm very much one of the gardeners in terms of how I write. For all my characters, after I've made their sheet and come up with a good backstory and motivation, I try to find the quirk of how they think. For Galianna, I leaned heavily into the motif of her lacking a solid identity/sense of self, as the one she grew up with under her grandfather is not one she considers 'hers' or 'herself,' having been trained since birth to be a faceless assassin. I think we all kind of feel that way growing up and I wanted to explore what that would be like for someone who not only grew up to not have an identity like most would, but for whom that possession of an identity actively feels uncomfortable. I like to do the same with a writing motif. Galianna really spoke to me as someone who existed in between the beats of her heart and in the lungs. I can never write linear stories either, so whoops, she bounces back and forth between different moments in the campaign, as she lines things in her mind not by time but by what mask she's put on. Also, yes, I did steal most of my naming conventions from Dragon Age elves, I'm a geek for that series.</p><p>Sidenote: our characters are all in their late teens as per our DM, so she is somewhere between 19 and 21 throughout all of this. If anyone is interested in knowing more, let me know and I'm happy to chat!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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